ABSTRACT
The ‘correctness of names’ is the subject of one of the later dialogues of Plato (c.429–347 BCE). In the first part of the Cratylus, Socrates argues with Hermogenes, a friend of Cratylus, that the meaning of names in general is not arbitrary or due to irrational convention as Hermogenes maintains, but so ‘correct’ in their meaning and application to individuals that they must have been deliberately and logically given by lawgivers at some time in the past. He points out that already in Homer a distinction is drawn, more than once, between the names by which gods and men call the same things (e.g. Iliad 2:813f.; 14:291; 20:74). He argues that the gods must have had a reason for using particular names and moreover that the gods’ names for things must be the correct ones.
